High cancer rates demonstrate state’s need for a cancer center

According to the American Cancer Society’s “Facts and Figures,” females in Connecticut have the third-highest rates of cancer in the nation. Males in Connecticut have the third-highest rate of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and the second-highest national rate for bladder cancer.

We all know the horrors of this disease and the burdens the disease imposes. How will we get cancer patients in Connecticut the best possible care? How will we achieve cutting-edge cancer research on cure and prevention? Who will be doing the research to find out why the cancer rates in this country are so high, and why, in particular, cancer rates are so high in Connecticut?

One ray of real hope for is the proposed $430 million cancer center.

We are in desperate need of this. Most communities would give their eyeteeth for such a facility, and yet the city of New Haven does not seem to understand the cancer center’s importance to the community or the incredible benefits the center will provide to the health-care needs of the citizens of New Haven and Connecticut.

We are being offered a first-class cancer center. New Haven and the Mayor must show leadership on this issue and allow it to be built — for the sake of people with cancer and without.